To be a good cook you have to be able to “feel” a meal as you make it. Following a recipe is just like putting together a bookshelf from Target or playing sudoku. Yeah, there are ways to screw it up, but if you follow the directions well you will end up with a result that is normal. But 10 million other people can get the exact same results.

A cook uses recipes, a chef makes up their own. So yes, you can be a good cook and use recipes. I would hope over time, as a cook you would learn how to adjust recipes to make them better but there is nothing wring with following a recipe. I know lots of adults who can barely read much less follow a recipe.

If someone does more than heat up something they bought, I don’t consider it cheating. I don’t consider heating something up from the store cheating either for that matter, unless someone lies about it.

Of course it isn’t cheating. Restaurant chefs/Executive Chefs don’t just throw things in a pan and call it good. (Well, at times they do) They need their dishes to be consistent and delicious so they absolutely use recipes. If you have a clientele that keeps coming back for a certain dish, it better be just like it was last time.

I personally think “good cooks” learn from using recipes in the beginning anyway. They also learn from winging it and have failures as well as great successes. A good cook learns from experience, trial and error, and watching pro’s. I’m not working right now and have Food Network on all day as background noise. The tips and methods used (and, quite often, explanations) have taught me invaluable lessons.

I used to cook like my mom and grandma did – and only how they did. They were awesome down home cooks but I wanted to learn more so I figured out how to do that. I get very irritated at people who say using crock pots is cheating or using recipes is cheating. Really? Says who? These people just like to make others feel small so they can feel better about themselves.

It’s all about getting in their and doing it. Over this last weekend my 4 yo granddaughter proclaimed for all the world to hear,”My Nana cooks the best food EVER!!” At 4 she is obviously no foodie or professional chef, but I’ll take what I can get. And it’s not that I am the best cook ever, but I get around in the kitchen just fine and cooking for my family is my expression of love to them.

Cook from your heart and tell the naysayers to go back under their rock.

I can’t follow a recipe to save my life (I just make things up as I go), but I have a good friend that follows recipes all the time. I think it’s just different styles of cooking. We both bake and cook, and all of our dishes turn out fine.

Great responses! I agree with most of you, I dont consider it cheating.. especially these days when most people’s food come from pre-packaged or fast-food places :/ Its still interesting to see everyones opinion on it though! I have a friend who scoffs at people who use recipes and feel that they are good cooks, so thats how the topic came about

I consider them a good cook but not an amateur chef. In my family, we have a person like this (great at making food from recipes) and I was actually surprised when my dad objected when I said she was a good cook. Considering he’s hardly a food genius, I was surprised when he said she isn’t a good cook because she only follows existing recipes.

I will agree there is something very special about an amateur chef, which my FI actually is, lucky for me. We’ll have random things at home like sardines, lychee fruit, broccoli, yams, and cinnamon, and he will make this unappetizing random assortment of stuff into amazing food. It’s definitely a gift. But I think it’s very rare. If someone’s own “cooking” heavily involves defrosting pre-processed food (dad), I find it bizarre that they can breezily call someone who cooks well but by recipes “not a good cook.”

I think that as long as you’re not constantly nuking frozen meals, it’s not cheating. People learn how to cook by following recipes and/or by being in the kitchen as a youngster with their parents. I start off with recipes and after a certain level of comfortability, I will switch out ingredients that I think will taste good in the dish. If it tastes good, you’re golden!